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The Blink of an Eye

Have you enjoyed that extra hour of sleep this week? I hope so, because “Falling Back” is perhaps the only chance you will ever have to enjoy, even metaphorically, a bonus of that most precious commodity in your life . . . time.

Everyone looks at time from their own point of view: the prisoner sitting in his cell; the sailor at sea; the pensioner watching his money.

When I was young, “time” was just an abstraction, merely a “word” that described something that didn’t really affect me.

Now that I’m old, time is so finite that I sometimes fancy I hear the clock ticking. Even if your Latin vocabulary only consisted of two phrases: “Tempus Fugit” (Time Flies) and “Carpe Diem” (Seize the Day), you would be a wise individual.

The English author, Samuel Johnson, who wanted to make sure he remembered how quickly time flies, had inscribed on his watch the words “Night Cometh,” the salient message from Jesus’ reminder to his disciples not to waste time: “The night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4).

Compare that warning to one of another Samuel, the actor, Samuel L. Jackson, quoting Ezekiel 25:17 in the Quentin Tarantino movie, Pulp Fiction:

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness.”